The Importance of Being Hannah ArendtDaphne Merkin on a brilliant new film presenting Hannah Arendt in the midst of the Eichmann trial and the 'banality of evil.' I have...
Bridget Jones Is Back After more than a decade, the woman who put the chick in lit is ready to give her millions of fans exactly what they want: an update on...
No Success Like FailureFrom the wreckage of his life, Richard Yates salvaged a few good books Posthumous literary reputations are tricky affairs, as is the...
The Lady VanquishedJean Rhys articulated the plight of the abandoned woman Jean Rhys lived a hard-luck life and wrote, almost exclusively, about hard-luck...
The Upside of AngerClaire Messud’s novel of a stalled woman artist From the outset, it’s been clear that Claire Messud has all the necessary equipment—a...
Behind the Green Baize DoorTwo books explore England’s master-servant divide SERVANTS: A DOWNSTAIRS HISTORY OF BRITAIN FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO MODERN TIMES...
A Novel of the 'Post-Wounded Woman'This is how much I liked Catherine Lacey’s début novel, “Nobody Is Ever Missing”: I read it over a summer weekend, mostly transfixed,...
So We Read On and Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers and SwellsDid the Jazz Age ever exist — apart from being a cultural construct, that is, a coinage credited to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and one that he...